Sony gave gamers a pre-E3 treat when it finally revealed its next-generation console, the PlayStation 4 (PS4).

Sony unveiled the PS4 console the night before the Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) conference, which runs from June 11-13. The company dropped a few details about the console's specs, games and controller earlier this year, but didn't show off the actual console until now.

The PS4 is a nearly all-black console with the exception of a strip of purple in the tower. One portion of the console has a glossy black finish and holds the PlayStation and Sony logos on it. The rest is a matte black finish.

Also, the curves of the PS3 are nowhere to be found on the PS4. It has a rhombus shape and sharp edges, and can lay horizontally or stand vertically.

The updated DualShock 4 controller has a touch surface and a Share button to upload game footage to many different online networks. The PlayStation 4 Eye completes the hardware package with twin cameras and a four-microphone setup.

For those who need a refresher on what's under the hood, the PS4 will feature an 8-core 64-bit x86 Jaguar CPU built by AMD; a Radeon GPU comprised of 18 compute units (achieves 1.84 TFLOPS); a 6x Blu-ray drive; 8GB of GDDR5 of unified RAM; USB 3.0; Bluetooth 2.1; HDMI; optical out, and 802.11n Wi-Fi.

Sony also presented some of the upcoming PS4 games, such as "Elder Scrolls Online," which will launch next spring; "NBA 2K14"; "Assassin's Creed 4: Black Flag"; "Killzone: Shadow Fall," which is due the first quarter of 2014; "Infamous: Second Son," which will be released the first quarter of 2014; "Final Fantasy Versus XIII," and "Kingdom Hearts III."

Sony also revealed some excellent game-related news for the PS4: there will be no new restrictions on used games, and the console won't need to go online in order to authenticate -- making it completely offline capable. This is a great edge for the PS4, considering Microsoft's upcoming Xbox 360 successor -- the Xbox One -- will allow third-party publishers to opt out of used game sales. Both Microsoft and the publishers don't receive license fees on used game sales, but Microsoft was sneaky about the new policy by allowing third parties to make the decision on whether to ban the new games -- which puts them to blame instead of Microsoft for upset gamers.

Microsoft announced its Xbox One console in late May. The new machine will feature an APU with eight x86-64 cores; 8GB of DDR3 RAM; a GPU based on an AMD GCN architecture with 12 compute units (768 cores total for 1.23 TFLOPS; a 500 GB non-replaceable hard drive; three USB 3.0 ports; HDMI, and a Blu-ray optical drive.

The Xbox One will have an introductory price of $499 USD when it's released in November 2013.

The PS4, which will be released during the holiday season of 2013, will have an introductory price of $399 -- another edge against the new Xbox.